ABSTRACT
TIIOlVlfl,.S CROMWELL AND THE BREAI{ ,\VITH ROME
THOMAS CROMWELL ,vas born about the year 1485 atPutney where his father had a small business as a smithand fuller; of his youth very little is known. He seems to have pursued a most adventurous and unorthodox career which took him abroad as a soldier of fortune in the Italian wars; later he became a merchant with interests and connections on the Antwerp market and somehow got enough learning in the common law to set up as an attorney. He himself told Cranmer that he had been quite a ruffian in his early days, and there survive a number of unreliable stories which only agree in showing that he knocked about Europe in surprising fashion. No doubt it was in these years that he acquired not only an understanding of men and the world, but also an outlook remarkably free from the prejudices of his time and country, and a wide knowledge of languages. He had a reputation for pleasant conversation and wit, for never forgetting old friends and benefactors, and for being a good master to his servants and protector to his clients. His naturally po\verful intellect was developed by his unusual history into the most successfully radical instrument at any man's disposal in the sixteenth century; as a statesman he displayed cool indifference in destroying the old and perspicacious dexterity in constructing afresh. His temper was secular, sympathetic to the prevailing anti-clericalism of the time; dislike of the priesthood may have been magnified inte contempt for the papacy by what he saw in Italy. But he appears to have been virtually devoid of passion, even in his anti-clericalism: he did not hate priests as such, or as purveyors of bad religion, but simply objected to them as obstacles to his plans. Cromwell seems to have been incapable of merely negative opinions; everything he did was designed to achieve some positive end, some lasting result. His qualities made himthe most remarkable revolutionary in English history-a man who knew precisely where he was going and who nearly always achieved the end he had in view. Though he ,vas ruthless in affairs, he lacked cruelty; seeing little purpose in mercy, he yet had no trace of vindictiveness. Like all politicians of the age he took bribes and presents, but the
wealth he accumulated he also spent: ostentation was as foreign to his nature as the pride which values the appearance of power above its reality.
